


A small hole at the top of the sky

by marginalia



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: F/M, only applicable warnings would be warnings that applied to the movie, seriously she breaks my heart, shameless lucille love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:28:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5471375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginalia/pseuds/marginalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knew every ugly thing she had done and every ugly thing that had been done to her; he had mapped every scar on her body and still he thought her beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A small hole at the top of the sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Emerla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emerla/gifts).



> Title from The Man-Moth by Elizabeth Bishop. No warnings on account of how everything warning-worthy is canonical.

Thomas's last breath came, a wet and slow and ragged sigh, but Lucille was already gone. She had no time to wait, to witness, but it did not matter. There was no need. They had been one being, and now that he was gone she was a fractured and twisted half-human, finally, fully the monster her mother had told her she was. She felt the loss in every part of herself, and all that remained was fury, a fire raging through her faster than she could have imagined possible. 

The only good in her life was lost. Somehow she had always known that she would be the one to destroy him.

::

Even as a child, Thomas had been beautiful. To Lucille he had been an infusion of life, the one pure light in their desperately sad house. He had not brought joy to their parents, but only the briefest moment of satisfaction. They had produced an heir, he appeared likely to live if not to bring them glory, and having no more need, the fiction of their family, always tenuous at best, was broken.

Lucille was a toddler when Thomas was born, and both were entrusted to the care of servants, particularly to their wet-nurse Theresa. "Lucy, dear. Gentle with him now," she would say. "Big sister is a very important job." 

Children are resilient, and for a time Theresa was able to provide a warm and loving space for them, a space where Lucille discovered her value, teaching him as she learned herself. There was a certain freedom when their parents were away, and though they were forbidden close contact with the servants, no one was going to incur the wrath of the master or the mistress by reporting the children visiting, taking meals, sometimes even sleeping in the comfort of that small community.

It had been inevitable, though, that Lady Sharpe would return unexpectedly, that she would find them in the innocent joy of the servants quarters, that she would cast out Theresa and rain down blows on Lucille. Lucille was even then a moth, searching out the warmth of the flame only to find herself burned. She stood firm, jaw set, no tears, accepting the punishment for them both. It was not the first time she had stood between Thomas and the cane, and it would not be the last.

Lady Sharpe stared down this tiny monument of a child. "To the attic," she said. "Monster."

::

Isolated now even from the servants, they had only themselves to draw on for warmth. As they grew, Lucille continued to protect Thomas from the violence of both of their parents, and they learned about their little world together, exploring the moor, the gardens, their rooms, and finally, inevitably, each other.

"Show me," Thomas said one day. She gave him the small tin of salve and he warmed it between his hands before daubing it gently on the marks their father had left across her back. "I can't let you do this for me anymore," he said. "I have to be a man."

"It's not for much longer," she said, shivering at his touch. "I'm taking care of it." For that was what she did. She took care of things for them. She took care when she collected the arsenic, and she took care when she used it on their father. She took care of all the ugliness she could, and allowed Thomas only to care for her, nurturing as best she could the kindness of his nature. They were linked, light and dark, twins outside the womb. Separation was not to be borne.

When, in the end, she took care of their mother, it seemed to be the only possible outcome, where love and hate converged.

::

The institution was preferable to the gaol, but not very much so. Lucille was sent there on the privilege of her name and the family's imagined remaining wealth, though nothing was contributed to her upkeep as it was for Garlands Hospital's other patients of title. 

"Your ladyship," guards would say, voices dripping in sarcasm, but she allowed no insult to touch her as she gave herself over to the routine. The laundry was hard labor and meant as cruelty to inspire moral character, but she had long been accustomed to work outside her station. This was mere indignity. 

The real punishment, to a girl used to extreme isolation, was the overcrowding. They were given exercise, walking on country roads a few times a week, and she plotted her escape. She longed for the safety of Thomas, though she knew not where he was. She knew she could find him. They were linked. He came to her in dreams. He would guide her back to him.

After her third escape attempt she was sedated, put in isolation, and visited by violence in the night. She curled into herself after, arms tight around her torso, and waited for the dawn. It was her last attempt. She would not be allow herself to be left alone again. She called to Thomas in her dreams. She would endure.

::

Garlands Hospital deemed her an adult at seventeen, and the court agreed she had served her sentence, though it was more likely she was set free to gain use of her bed for a girl from a family who could pay. There were many families looking for places to hide away their difficult children, and girls were the most difficult of all.

She had expected only the coachman, but Thomas came to retrieve her. He stood in the family waiting room of Garlands, and her breath caught to see him, transformed from a boy to a young man. He was taller than her now, back ramrod straight, head of dark curls held high, but he was still her Thomas, and it took all her years of practiced restraint to tamp down the hunger, to not fall into his arms. 

He grasped her hands, then slid their mother's garnet ring into her palm and closed her fingers around it. "I've come to take you home."

He had been at boarding school, he told her, but he was finished with that now. "This is a new start for us," he said, and she gave a half-smile at his innocence. He was full of plans, books he was going to read, techniques he was going to try to improve the mine. He touched her cheek, traced the scar on her lip with his thumb. "I will care for you now."

::

Those were the purest years, the years before they understood the degree to which their father had destroyed their heritage. They were one with each other, one with the house. They slept in the attic still. There was no one around, and no place that Lucille felt safer. She dreamed that they were trees, ancient, their roots piercing tangled deep into the clay, drawing up dark red life from the earth, through the floors and ceilings, their branches arms entwined, pointing through the roof to the moon, the hole at the top of the sky. 

Nothing grew in this land but them, and she thought they could grow there forever. 

She woke to his touch, strong fingers at her shoulder. "Dreaming?" he asked. "You should only have beautiful dreams."

She shifted, and turned her back to him, staring into the flicker of the candlelight. _Are you happy here_ , she thought. _Do you love me. Am I a monster._ "I dreamed of us," she said finally.

"Ah," he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "So it was a beautiful dream." He kissed her neck, traced the scars on her back through her nightdress. He knew every part of her, she thought. He knew every ugly thing she had done and every ugly thing that had been done to her; he had mapped every scar on her body and still he thought her beautiful. 

The whisper of the bedclothes and the whisper of moth wings were one and the same as she turned and opened to him, humming the lullaby of her beautiful boy until he kissed away her darkness. He was her sun, her life, her everything. He reached down, long fingers touching her where they met, tipping her over the edge.

"And you'll never fall in love with anyone else?" she asked.

"Never," he said. "Never." 

::

When they were forced to face the reality of the estate, there was truly only one option remaining. Lucille could not live outside of the Hall, and they had nothing left to sell but his charm. Trading on the title and on vague connections from his few years away at school, they travelled, seeking their prey like vampires, wearing the dated finery of their murdered parents like two people flung out of time. 

Out in the world she watched him. He existed in society in a way she could not understand, in a way she could never replicate herself. She was amazed at how much he had learned while they were apart. When they could not touch, she followed him with her eyes, unblinking. He was her anchor. He must not be taken away from her.

The worst part was the other people. The worst part was pretending they weren't one being. The worst part was waiting for the women to die.

The worst part was holding the pillow over the face of their child, muffling first the cry, then all breath, staring dumbly at the cold moon.

She cut the ring from the women's fingers. She braided locks of their hair. She buried the child on the moor, digging into the hard unhallowed ground first with the shovel, and finally tearing at the earth with her hands. She took care of it all.

::

Lucille had always believed that they were bound to Allerdale Hall. Bound by love, and fear, and blood. Every time they were away she felt it, no mere thread but a sinew, tying them, bone and soul, to their home. It was a physical ache in her chest when they were away, growing tauter and sharper with each mile, a devastating relief upon return.

She could not believe that they would ever truly leave, not even in death. She was half correct.

::

Edith was the first one who caused Lucille to worry. Pamela had been crippled, Margaret old, Enola captivated by that beast of a child, but Edith was clever. Naive, but clever. She still dared to dream. Lucille could feel the light of Edith drawing him away from her even at the start, Lucille watching Thomas watching Edith over the light of the candle, dancing steps they had learned together in the attic as their mother played, floors below. 

They took separate hotel rooms in every city, a fiction that never fooled the housekeeping staff when there was only one bed to make up. She clung to him on nights when he seemed to look past her, her fingerprints invisible on his skin, a reminder that he had made a promise.

Smashing the father's head in was a release she hadn't felt since she buried the cleaver in the head of their mother. Blood and water swirling around her feet. Poison is too respectable a death. Too slow. Too unsatisfying. The only advantage is it's easy to hide.

::

Now, the other ghosts have gone. The wives, their mother, Thomas, their child. Their stories have come to an end. They have no need to stay. Only Lucille lingers in the Hall. She sings the songs Theresa sang to them as children: lullabies of the darkness of mines, of infants stolen by fairies, of cold winds rushing around castles. She sings for Thomas.

When she closes her eyes she sees him again, beautiful and strong before her. His eyes are full of love and sorrow, and she reaches out to him, pale and shimmering, only to grasp once again at nothingness as he dissolves into the ether.

She lays her fingers upon the piano keys and begins, once again, to call him back home through the hole in the top of the sky.


End file.
